Nick Ashdown – Journalisthttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com
Professional PortfolioSun, 18 Feb 2018 06:24:07 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngNick Ashdown – Journalisthttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com
Turkish Marriage Showshttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/turkish-marriage-shows/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/turkish-marriage-shows/#respondSun, 19 Nov 2017 14:20:35 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=275Here is the original draft of a story I did for The National. The published version was cut a great deal, so I wanted to put up the longer original as well:

ISTANBUL — The two contestants sit on stage with a barrier blocking their line of sight, music playing softly in the background. Erkan is clean-cut with chiseled features and a fair complexion, wearing a purple plaid sports jacket and black collared shirt partially covering a neck tattoo. Zahra looks like a model, tall and thin with long dark hair contrasting sharply with her snow-white outfit and towering high heels.They exchange formalities and Zahra explains that she came onto Turkey’s most popular marriage show after noticing Erkan, who had been featured in previous episodes she’d watched.

“I just saw you and liked you,” she says. “You’re respectful to your parents. I love my parents so much. You’re emotional, and so am I.”

Erkan asks if she’s a jealous person.

“No, I don’t like jealousy.”

“But I’m a jealous guy.”

“So?” she responds, unfazed.

“Would you do things I don’t want you to do?” he pushes.

“For example?”

“Like if I told you not to go somewhere, would you still go? Would you wear what I tell you not to wear?”

When she confirms that she would indeed follow his requests, the audience cheers their approval.

Minutes later Erkan is already smitten.

“For the first time in my life I’m really taken with a person I’ve never seen before. This can’t be happening,” he says, as the audience goes wild.

The host, Esra Erol, finally lets Zahra walk around the barrier to meet Erkan, where he’s standing and waiting with his eyes closed, face tilted upwards. The music from the popular Turkish drama Aşk-ı Memnu soars in the background. When he sees Zahra for the first time, Erkan’s eyes bulge, his mouth forming a giant O as a joyful expression of awe springs across his face. He paces around the stage, too excited to stand still, and finally comes back to give Zahra a hug.

“I swear to God my hands are shaking,” he says, as Erol playfully splashes water on his face.

Soon Erkan is down on one knee proposing to Zahra. She accepts, as the crowd whistles and cheers.

“That was fast,” exclaims Erol.

***

Erkan and Zahra’s love story is one of the best known from Turkey’s ultra popular marriage shows, which Erol pioneered.

The shows are similar to western matchmaking shows, except that marriage is always the end goal, families are heavily involved, sex isn’t openly discussed and like many Turkish shows, they’re incredibly long – three to four hours.

They’re also criticized by religious conservative groups who deem them improper, feminists and leftists who think they degrade women and are too conservative, and regular people who think they’re trashy and damaging to Turkish society.

Last March then Deputy Prime Minister Nurman Kurtulmuş stated that Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) had received 120,000 complaints against marriage shows, which “ruin Turkey’s social and traditional family structure,” and that more restrictions needed to be imposed.

“Some of these shows are really out of control. They’re against our family values, culture, faith and traditions,” he stated.

RTÜK has threatened to cancel them, but the latest announcement in August was that “this season there will be a different format.”

At an airing of the Esra Erol show on October 9

Despite the massive popularity of marriage programs (the top three garner over three million of the seven to eight million daytime TV watchers during the summer), the National struggled to find anyone who didn’t insist on hating them, some even getting offended by the topic.

“People who watch these shows are idiots. Read a book. Play chess. If you watch these shows, you’re an idiot,” said Canan İskender, a 22-year-old.

“I feel like [the contestants] are being staged like apes, and they’re aware of it,” says İstem Özdilek, a 40-year-old café owner and architect. “I think this goes against self-respect. That’s why I don’t like them.”

“It’s ridiculous that they need a TV show to find a partner,” said Semiha Gürsel, a 48-year-old housewife.

Feyza Akınerdem is a sociologist at Bosphorus University in Istanbul who studies marriage shows.

“It’s really difficult to find someone who says they like these shows. Even if they watch them, if you talk to them about these shows, they’ll say they hate them, they’re very bad, they’re trashy.”

Part of the cause of this stigma is the same reason why Akınerdem is fascinated by marriage shows – they often expose the problematic aspects of domestic life in Turkey, particularly for the working classes, that many people simply don’t want to know about.

When a female contestant is introduced to the viewers, she talks about her life, her relations with her family and her romantic history.

“It opens up a huge, formerly secret aspect of family life, and when you look there, you see very systematic violence [and] discrimination,” particularly towards women, Akınerdem says. “In the end I’m in favour of opening up these secrets in public so we have a chance to talk about them, to have proof about what’s happening to women.”

In October 2016, Leman, a 25-year-old contestant and mother of two came on Erol’s show and told her story. Her father had left her family and she married at 16 in an unofficial religious ceremony. Her husband later abandoned her and the kids.

“I ruined my life and now my kids are living the same life I did,” she said on the show. “I just want to get my life back on track; that’s the only reason I’m here.”

“Marriage shows basically promise a new life,” says Akınerdem “Marriage means happiness in the end, so they’re searching for happiness.”

Sometimes the domestic problems the shows reveal are even darker.

In May 2014 Sefer Çalınak, 62, was kicked off a live broadcast of Flash TV’s Luck of the Draw after confessing he’d killed two of his former romantic partners. Also in 2014, a contestant who’d gotten married on Erol’s show killed his wife three months later.

Erol was horrified and asked Akınerdem if it was her fault, but Akınerdem says femicides are caused by systemic problems like patriarchy, and marriage shows reveal these problems rather than causing them.

“You can single out marriage shows as the sole source of evil for Turkey’s familial problems. Politicians like to do that; they never want to see systematic problems,” she says.

Until 1990, Turkey’s national public broadcaster, the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) was the country’s sole TV channel. TRT was tasked with promoting the values of Turkey’s then Kemalist elite, secularist followers of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Programs showed an idealized version of Turkish society, hiding the problems.

“After commercialization [in the 1990s], television opened its screens to the lower classes and their tastes. At that time urban elites started to criticize television, like ‘It’s trashy, I hate these things, it’s for lower classes, it’s for foolish people,” Akınerdem explains.

The ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) important Islamist allies have always opposed marriage shows, but the dilemma the populist, religious-conservative AKP faces is that their core constituents – regular lower middle class people who are conservative but not Islamist – are also the core viewership of marriage shows.

“The elites of the AKP hate these shows, but they have to remain populist, so they can’t ban them,” says Akınerdem.

Television is extraordinarily popular in Turkey, so much so that it’s a key component of society, particularly for women, working classes and rural populations. According to government statistics, 95 per cent of Turks count TV as their favourite activity.

“We have a very domestic life in Turkey, and television is at the core,” Akınerdem says.

Suzan Akyüz is a 68-year-old retired director of libraries at the Ministry of Culture. She’s an Esra Erol fan (though repeatedly stresses she only watches from intellectual curiosity), or at least was until she felt marriage shows became too sensationalized in the last year or two.

Akyüz liked Erol’s show because she says it dealt with important social issues. Erol even spoke out against religious marriages and wrote two books about women’s experiences. However, Akyüz says that recently Erol’s show and others have become more lurid in order to compete for viewers.

“I don’t want to deprecate them, but they bring gypsies and sex workers, and the more they fight, the more viewership they have. They’re bad role models for society,” she says. “First they come looking like village girls – very simple – and then they put a lot of makeup on them and make them look like models.”

Akyüz says marriage shows became so popular in the first place because viewers could actually relate to the participants and their struggles.

As for Zahra and Erkan, they were married on live television on Zuhal Topal’s show – Esra Erol’s main competitor.

Contestants on Esra Erol

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/turkish-marriage-shows/feed/0nashdownIMG_4052IMG_4047Baghdad can do little about Turkish armed forces in northern Iraqhttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/baghdad-can-do-little-about-turkish-armed-forces-in-northern-iraq/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/baghdad-can-do-little-about-turkish-armed-forces-in-northern-iraq/#respondMon, 14 Dec 2015 07:25:57 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=262ISTANBUL — Turkey’s recent deployment of troops and tanks into northern Iraq has caused a major diplomatic row between Ankara and Baghdad, but experts say Turkish forces are there to stay.

“Honestly speaking there is not much Baghdad can do,” former Turkish consul to Erbil [capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq] Aydın Selcen said.

On December 4 Turkey sent at least 150 soldiers and 20 – 25 tanks to a military facility in the small Kurdish town of Bashiqa in Iraq, 19 miles north of Mosul, where it’s been assisting in the training of Iraqi forces

The so-called Islamic State (IS, ISIS, or ISIL) militant group captured the mostly Sunni city of Mosul, which has a population of about 1.5 million, in a shocking lightning offensive in June of last year. Plans to retake the city have stalled, though recent progress has been made by Kurdish forces to cut its supply routes.

Baghdad says the Turkish troops don’t have permission to be there and must leave immediately, calling the situation a ‘crisis’ and threatening to go to the United Nations. Powerful members of the Iraqi parliament have called for military strikes against the Turkish forces, though such a drastic measure is unlikely.

Ankara claims Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi himself had invited the troops, and refused to withdraw its deployment, though pledged to not send any more. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said the troops were needed to protect its already present forces in Iraq from ISIS fighters, to train Iraqi forces to fight ISIS, and to maintain stability in the region.

Washington, which has been leading air strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria for over a year,has said it doesn’t support military deployments in Iraq without Baghdad’s consent.

Massoud Barzani, leader of the autonomous KRG that currently controls Bashiqa, welcomed the Turkish troops and said he signed the agreement for their deployment on November 2.

Selcen says that the deployment shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone since it’s merely a reinforcement of Turkish forces that have been in Iraq for decades. Turkish military trainers have been working with Kurdish, Arab, and Turkmen fighters in Bashiqa for about two years. Ankara has also had military units including heavy armor stationed throughout northern Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991 to counter militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Selcen says the latest reinforcements have transformed Bashiqa into a permanent forward operating base, but said Turkish soldiers won’t be used offensively, such as in an expected assault on Mosul. “That would be stretching reality a bit.”

He said the expansion of the facility sends a clear signal of Turkey’s intentions to retain its presence in northern Iraq.

“It’s given a signal, a political message to all parties interested. To Erbil, it means, ‘we are with you.’ To Baghdad, it means more or less ‘we don’t care much about what you say.’ To Tehran and Moscow it means [that] in a now unified war theatre in Syria and Iraq ‘you are not on your own, we are here too.’ To Washington it says […] ‘we are allies with you in this but we are also able to move when need be according to our own national interests.’”

Hüseyin Bağcı, head of Middle Eastern Technical University’s international relations department, says the primary goal of Turkey’s armed forces in northern Iraq is still countering the PKK.

“Turkey’s main enemy is not ISIS, but the PKK,” Professor Bağcı said.

Akın Ünver, professor of international relations at Kadir Has University, says Turkey’s deployment is also about regaining lost prestige. In June 2014, ISIS overran Turkey’s consulate in Mosul and took 49 Turkish citizens hostage, releasing them the following September.

“It was actually one of the biggest national security and intelligence failures,” Ünver says. “They want to rectify that mistake. There’s a prestige issue there.”

Soner Çağaptay, Director of the Turkish Program at The Washington Institute, says that Baghdad has only now decided to voice its concern at Turkey’s long-time presence in northern Iraq because it’s being pressured by Russia and Iran, who are both vying for influence in the country.

“This is in my view a coordinated Iranian-Russian pushback,” he said. “They have gone to the government in Baghdad and told them to stand up to the Turks.”

Russia in particular is still furious over Turkey’s downing of its SU-24 jet on November 24 after the aircraft allegedly entered Turkish airspace.

He says there was never a formal agreement between Ankara and Baghdad allowing Turkish forces entry. Sowell believes the friction between the two countries comes not only from sectarianism (Turkey is majority-Sunni and Iraq majority Shia), but because of Turkey’s support for the KRG and a widely-held but only anecdotally-supported belief that Ankara supports ISIS.

The KRG, already enjoying significant autonomy, has long-followed a policy aiming for independence from Iraq, much to Baghdad’s chagrin. Turkey and the KRG have enjoyed very good relations at least since 2010, when Ankara established a consulate in Erbil, and are currently better than ever.

“Erbil right now is essentially a colony of Turkey,” Sowell says. “The only reason it’s able to function at all is because the Turks keep loaning them money.” Erbil is also only able to export oil independently of Baghdad through Turkey.

Ankara has recently been accused of following a sectarian policy in northern Iraq, supporting the very unpopular Sunni Nujaifi family. Atheel Nujaifi is the former governor of Nineveh Governorate (where Mosul is located), but was impeached in May.

He says the Nujaifi family is trying to create an autonomous Sunni region in Iraq, and Turkey is working with them because it wants influence over that theoretical region.

“This Sunni autonomous agenda, there’s just no way it’s going to happen. It can never pass in the Iraqi parliament,” which is dominated by Shia factions, Sowell says.

Ankara is using the base in Bashiqa to train not only Kurdish Peshmerga forces, but also the Nujaifi’s Sunni Arab militia, al-Hashd al-Watani (Popular Mobilization Forces).

“This is basically a Turkish-backed Sunni Arab militia. They don’t have any legal status, especially now that Atheel [Nujaifi] is no longer governor,” Sowell says, calling the Popular Mobilization Forces Nujaifi’s personal militia.

He says the militia, which is meant to take part in the liberation of Mosul, is in no shape whatsoever to do so. “They’re kind of a joke. They don’t really have weapons to train with.”

Sowell says the only force strong enough to retake Mosul is the Iraqi Armed Forces, possibly with the assistance of Shia militias and the Peshmerga. However Baghdad’s army has proven itself unwilling to take casualties and is notoriously disorganized. Furthermore, it can only reach Mosul by crossing through territory held by the KRG, so would need the permission of KRG president Masoud Barzani.

However, former consul Selcen disagrees.

“You cannot ‘liberate’ that kind of a [large Sunni] city with Shia forces or the so-called national Iraqi army. It’s up to the Mosul Arabs to get rid of ISIL there,” he says.

Professor Ünver says any kind of Shia force retaking Mosul could end up a disaster.

“If a Shiite group comes in and acts like a bull in a china-shop and starts killing Sunni civilians, that’s going to create even more tensions, which feeds into the whole ISIS narrative of being the only ones who can defend Sunnis.”

Professor Ünver says the Peshmerga should be further armed to take Mosul instead. He says a recent vote in the US House Foreign Affairs Committee allowing Washington to directly arm the Peshmerga without going through Baghdad is a significant development.

Ünver says retaking Mosul will be very difficult because of the huge number of civilians in the city, who ISIS doesn’t allow to leave. This will make airstrikes impossible without large civilian casualties.

“Basically ISIS is forcing whoever is going to retake Mosul into a street-by-street, building-by-building Stalingrad type of war.”

On Thursday Turkish National Intelligence Organization head Hakan Fidan and Foreign Ministry undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu traveled to Baghdad. On the same day, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said there will be a meeting between Turkey, the US, and KRG officials on December 21.

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/baghdad-can-do-little-about-turkish-armed-forces-in-northern-iraq/feed/0nashdownIn Turkey, labelling food ‘Kurdish’ still controversialhttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/in-turkey-labelling-food-kurdish-still-controversial/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/in-turkey-labelling-food-kurdish-still-controversial/#respondWed, 15 Apr 2015 08:50:28 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=248The Ottoman Empire had a rich culinary tradition flavoured by its various diverse regions and ethnic groups. Chefs in Istanbul’s imperial kitchens borrowed dishes from the different enclaves of the empire – the Balkans, Greece, the Caucasus, Kurdistan, Arabia – fused them with their Central Asian roots, and refined them to create their own unique concoctions, such as baklava, dumplings, stuffed vegetables and various types of kebab.

Present-day Turkey has inherited this cosmopolitan culinary legacy. However, the modern republic defined its identity ethnically, specifically with the Turkish ethnicity. In the past it severely oppressed its various minorities, and in the case of the largest – the Kurds – even denied their very existence, though this repression has largely declined through major reforms in more recent years.

It may seem strange to outsiders that in Turkey, where the Kurds represent 15 – 20 per cent of the population and boast a centuries-old culinary tradition, there is not a single Kurdish restaurant. There are however, restaurants with “southeastern” food, referring to the regions of Turkey with majority Kurdish populations.

There’s a small neighbourhood known as Kadınlar Pazarı (Lady’s Bazaar) in Istanbul’s conservative Fatih district, that’s sometimes referred to as “Little Kurdistan.” It’s full of markets, butchers and restaurants offering food from Turkey’s rugged southeast.

Kadınlar Pazarı

“All around here is Kurdish food,” says Orhan, a Kurd working in a butcher’s shop in Kadınlar Pazarı named after the Kurdish city Diyarbakır. Orhan asks to not have his last name used, and soon expresses apprehension at labeling food according to an ethnic group. He says it’s better to call it by the region it comes from.

A butcher’s shop in Kadınlar Pazarı

“This is a way of escaping from trouble,” says Delal Seven, a food expert and writer of a Kurdish food blog. Despite recent progress towards minority rights in Turkey, Seven says the legacy of oppression has left behind an environment where opening a “Kurdish restaurant” is still almost unthinkable.

“[Turkish nationalists] purposefully choose to ignore the existence of Kurds altogether, including their culture, their language, their dance, their music, their food, their everything,” she says.

Seven says if you find Kurdish food in a restaurant, everyone will simply refer to it, like Orhan does, as “southeastern.” She once thought about opening a Kurdish restaurant herself, but her friends advised against it.

“People told us if you don’t want to give up your private life and marriage, don’t do it,” Seven says. “We would definitely be attacked or targeted,” by racists, nationalists, or perhaps even the so-called ‘deep state,’ a shadowy network of ultranationalists seeking to preserve Turkey’s artificial ethnic purity.

Orhan’s colleague Murşit Koca, a cheerful young man from Mardin speaking Turkish with a throaty Kurdish accent, says that though Kurdish and Turkish food are similar, the east does have a unique eating culture. For example, people like spicier food and prefer to eat sitting together on the floor. “I’ve been in Istanbul for 22 years, and I still don’t even have a sofa,” Koca says with a big grin.

Murşit working in a butcher’s in Kadınlar Pazarı

A little down the street from the butcher’s, Levent Avcı, owner of a well-known restaurant called Büryan Kebap Salonu, offers his opinion: “There’s no such thing as Kurdish food.” But he seems to be referring to high cuisine, since he later concedes that Kurds may cook their own food in their kitchens at home, but “because we grow up in the same country, it’s generally the same food.”

Avcı, who has served food to the likes of President Erdoğan, Martha Stewart, and a host of other impressive guests, resents the nickname “Little Kurdistan.” He fears it may scare off people who associate the word Kurdistan with terrorism. He points out that people in the neighbourhood are predominantly from the southeast, but they’re not all Kurds.

Avcı himself is of Arab descent, hailing from Siirt, a Kurdish-majority city in the southeast with a large Arab minority. He says if anything, the food he serves at his four generation-old restaurant is Ottoman, pointing out that the signature dish after which the restaurant is named was invented by his great-grandfather during the twilight years of the empire.

Levent Avcı (right) with his father Şerafettin, who cuts the meat for their signature dish.

But not everyone is uncomfortable with labeling food according to the culture that produced it. “Definitely there is something called Kurdish food!” Seven says with a laugh.

In addition to being influenced by its neighbours, namely Turks, Armenians and Arabs, Kurdish food has been shaped by the severe weather and mountainous, largely infertile geography of Kurdistan, the regions of Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran where Kurds live.

“The land decides what kind of food there will be,” Seven explains. Because food in the region is hard to grow, animals such as lambs and chickens are raised as a food source. As she puts it: “We are kind of meat experts.” Kurds have lived difficult lives in their harsh region, working hard and needing a lot of calories fast, so the food is mainly high-calorie and prepared quickly.

Kurdish cuisine shares much in common with Turkish, as well as Arab, Armenian, Assyrian and Persian. Meat and wild mountain herbs assume a more prominent role in Kurdish food when compared to Turkish, and olive oil, a pillar of Turkish cuisine, is used much less in Kurdish food. Typical Kurdish dishes include dolma (stuffed grape leaves), stuffed vegetables, meat dumplings and lamb stew, all of which are served with sweetened black tea.

Seven says labelling a food by ethnicity is vital for cultural reasons. Cuisine is an incredibly important aspect of culture, and Kurds have historically been conditioned to undervalue theirs, including their food. “[Kurds] finally believed that they don’t exist, that their food doesn’t exist [or] isn’t valuable, isn’t special,” she says.

When Seven asks other Kurds about their favourite dishes, “a flash of happiness crosses their faces,” she says. “When you remind people of these dishes, it refreshes their identity, their past, and it kind of confirms there is such a past.”

Seven recalls her own memories from her childhood in Bingöl, a small eastern city wrapped in mountains and lakes.

“I remember the fun parts,” she says. When women would make tradition noodles, they would make the dough in containers, roll it out thinly, and then wrap it around a stick to dry. “As a kid we were all in completion to be the first to get the stick from this woman’s hand. We were like eagles on the hunt.”

Seven says there’s an important communal aspect to Kurdish food culture. She gives an example of making noodles for Erişte Soup in a Kurdish village.

“I, to represent my house, go all over the village, tell all the women that tomorrow we’re making this, and everybody brings their tables and tools and they come over,” she explains. “You suddenly see maybe 30 people in front of your place […] They work together all day just to provide your house’s noodles.”

Avcı agrees on the significant of food to a culture. “Siirt’s culture starts with food,” he eagerly explains, his eyes glowing.

“When you have a guest in your house, the first way you show them your culture is with your food,” Avcı says. “All the best friendships start with the stomach. Once your stomach is full, conversation starts.”

The rice for Perde Pilavı.

He talks about a particularly important dish in Siirt, Perde Pilavı, which is eaten by a bride and groom on their wedding day. The bride’s mother-in-law delivers the dish in a closed pan, which symbolizes the importance of not letting out household secrets. The rice symbolizes fertility, almonds symbolize a son, pistachios a daughter. Black pepper represents the bad days, and sweet sultana raisins the good days, while the meat inside symbolizes peace and happiness.

Seven wants Kurds to talk about their food with as much pride as Avcı. She says a real Kurdish restaurant would certainly help Kurds to recognize and be proud of their cuisine. “Once [Kurds] are able to present [their food] to people, then they’ll recognize its value.”

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/in-turkey-labelling-food-kurdish-still-controversial/feed/0nashdownKadınlar PazarıButcher's in Kadınlar PazarıOrhan working in a butcher's in Kadınlar PazarıLevent Avcı (right) with his father Şerafettin.The rice for Perde Pilavı.Residents of doomed ancient town have nowhere to gohttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/residents-of-doomed-ancient-town-have-nowhere-to-go/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/residents-of-doomed-ancient-town-have-nowhere-to-go/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 10:25:48 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=239

The small ancient town of Hasankeyf in southeastern Turkey.

ISTANBUL – Hasankeyf, an 11,500 year-old town in southeastern Turkey with vestiges of 20 distinct cultures, is slated to be under 60 metres of water in the near future. As construction of the controversial Ilisu Dam nears completion some 80 kilometres away, the government is encouraging the 3,000 mostly poor residents to move into apartments they can’t afford.

“They killed Hasankeyf,” says Ercan Tarhan, who works at a café in the village. He says he doesn’t have much hope for saving his town, and isn’t sure what he’ll do after it’s flooded. “We don’t want to leave.”

The government has started construction of New Hasankeyf, a settlement of modern-style apartment buildings above the flood line further up the hills nearby. The new accommodation will cost between $40,000 and $90,000, but the state will only pay most residents $5,000 to $10,000 for their soon to be destroyed homes. Half of the town’s residents have a monthly salary of $330 or less.

The ‘New Hasankeyf’ settlement can be seen at the foot of the hills in the distance on the right hand side, with the ruins of the 12th century bridge in the foreground.

According to a 2012 survey by Doga Dernegi, an environmental group, 68 per cent of Hasankeyf’s residents don’t want to move to the new town, though almost half are planning to. Almost one third don’t know where to go after the flooding, and nearly half have no idea how they’ll pay for new homes.

Tarhan’s café, like all of Hasankeyf – Arabic for ‘rock fortress’ – is built into the soft limestone of a cliff overlooking the shallow waters of the Tigris River. The slender minaret of the 600 year-old El Rizk Mosque, product of the Muslim Ayyubid Kurdish dynasty, towers nearby. But the Ayyubids were not the only ones to leave their mark on ancient Hasankeyf, one of the oldest continuous settlements on earth.

Last year a Japanese team discovered 11,500 year-old painted graves from the Neolithic Age. Little is known about those pre-historical cultures, but there are about 6,000 human-made caves dating from that period, some of which are still inhabited. Since Emperor Constantine had a fort built on the site in 300 AD, the former Silk Road staging post has been ruled by Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turkmen, Kurds, Mongols and Turks.

About 300 medieval monuments remain. There’s the crumbling grass-topped pillars of a 12th century bridge that Marco Polo allegedly once crossed, a fourth century Byzantine citadel looming 100 metres above the Tigris, and the 15th century glazed blue tile mausoleum of Zeynel Bey of the Turkic Akkoyunlu dynasty, the only example of Timurid-style Central Asian architecture in Turkey.

The 15th century Timurid-style Zeynel Bey mausoleum.

The construction of both the new town and the dam has been done with little consultation or openness. “The government’s making all these plans, and no one knows what they are,” says Banu Aydinoglugil, an archaeologist studying Hasankeyf. “They’re not being transparent.”

There are rumours the government is planning on developing tourism in the region after the flooding, converting some of the remaining caves into hotels, and even turning ruins into underwater attractions, but there are major doubts.

“There won’t be any tourism when Hasankeyf floods,” Aydinoglugil says, echoing the view of many experts and activists. “In the new settlement, you’re not going to have this view, you’re not going to have the Tigris.”

John Crofoot is one of the founders of the website Hasankeyf Matters, an information portal and group that advocates for heritage preservation. He says the town could be more valuable as a tourist site if it were developed properly, and could even generate more revenues than the dam. He says tourism attracts foreign currency and spurs other sectors as well.

“It’s not too much of a stretch in our opinion of thinking of Hasankeyf as potentially rivalling Cappadocia and Ephesus as one of Anatolia’s top three tourism destinations,” Crofoot says, but he agrees with Aydinoglugil that flooding would destroy the area as a tourist attraction.

Arif Ayhan, a local rug-seller in the town, is frustrated with politicians and experts paying more attention to ancient ruins than the people living in the town now. “They talk about the history – the castle, the bridge – but nobody talks about the people of Hasankeyf,” he says.

The town is a rare example of “living heritage,” because people still live on the site, practicing a unique culture that includes animal husbandry, weaving and sewing. Their homes have gardens, stables and tandoors for making bread. The flooding will destroy fertile agricultural land, and the new settlement in the hills doesn’t have land that’s flat enough for farming.

“Nobody wants an apartment,” Ayhan says. “We live in houses. We have gardens and fields.”

There are also regularly visited holy places that will be flooded. “In the new settlement, they’re not going to have all these sacred places, rituals and their social life,” Aydinoglugil says.

Ayhan says it’s hard to make plans for the future when no one knows when the flooding will happen. The government has been talking about building the dam for the past 50 years, and completion dates for both the dam and the new settlement keep changing. The last completion date for Ilisu was mid-2014, but that has been recently delayed for another 19 – 24 months.

Ayhan wants to expand his business, but can’t until he knows when the flooding will occur, and whether or not the area will still be a tourist destination. Many people are leaving because of the uncertainties. There are 3,000 residents now, but Ayhan says there were 15,000 in his father’s time.

Flooding from the Ilisu Dam will displace 25,000 people and cause massive environmental destruction. The flooding will also be “an ecological disaster,” according to Ercan Ayboga, an activist with Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive. Water quality will decrease, many species will disappear, and diseases like Malaria may reappear. The dam will also affect southern Iraq, where “hundreds of thousands” of farmers will have to leave their land because of 40 – 45 per cent less irrigation.

The dam will generate $500 – $600 million in revenues and two per cent of Turkey’s electricity, but the people of Hasankeyf won’t see any of that money or power.

“The local population will not benefit from it,” says Ayboga. He says the electricity goes to national grids and local authorities don’t receive the revenues.

The displaced people in rural areas will mostly move to cities such as Diyarbakir and Batman, losing their distinctive rural Kurdish culture in the process.

“Kurdish culture is undergoing assimilation.” Ayboga says, but rural Kurds are the least assimilated. “Many stories, songs, and poems are related to the nature of Kurdistan,” especially along the Tigris, but these will be forgotten as these Kurds are forced to urbanize.

However, these cities won’t receive extra funding or infrastructure, and Ayboga says unemployment will increase. “The cities will grow, but they don’t offer much to the people.”

Instead, Ayboga says, “you should support the people where they are,” with rural development and small local projects. “Give them opportunities.”

The 4th century Byzantine citadel towers 100 metres above the Tigris.

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/residents-of-doomed-ancient-town-have-nowhere-to-go/feed/1nashdownThe small ancient town of Hasankeyf in southeastern Turkey.The 'New Hasankeyf' settlement can be seen at the foot of the hills in the distance on the right hand side, with the ruins of the 12th century bridge in the foreground.The 15th century Timurid-style Zeynel Bey mausoleum.The 4th century Byzantine citadel towers 100 metres above the Tigris.The ‘Magic Pill’: How Music Helps Kids Escape a Stressful World (30 minute radio documentary)https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/the-magic-pill-how-music-helps-kids-escape-a-stressful-world-30-minute-radio-documentary/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/the-magic-pill-how-music-helps-kids-escape-a-stressful-world-30-minute-radio-documentary/#respondTue, 04 Jun 2013 15:51:22 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=184Young people live increasingly stressful lives these days. One way of alleviating this stress is by taking music classes. In fact, researchers agree that studying music has all kinds of benefits for kids. Despite these benefits, most schools in Ontario don’t have a qualified music teacher with a musical background. Many parents therefore put their children into private music classes, but these can be expensive. Advocates argue that a robust musical education should be provided by public schools so that everyone has access. Nick Ashdown reports in Ottawa.

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/the-magic-pill-how-music-helps-kids-escape-a-stressful-world-30-minute-radio-documentary/feed/0nashdownThe CIA’s targeted killing programhttps://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/the-cias-targeted-killing-program/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/the-cias-targeted-killing-program/#respondFri, 05 Apr 2013 17:49:02 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=149As a month of anti-drone protests begins in the United States, some advocates are calling for the controversial targeted killing program to be shifted from the Central Intelligence Agency to the Defence Department. The program targets suspected members of terrorist groups in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Human Rights Watch is among the groups advocating for this transfer. “Our first and primary concern right now is the lack of transparency,” says Andrea Prasow, HRW’s senior counterterrorism counsel for the U.S. She says the Defence Department tends to be more transparent and accountable than the CIA, and must report its actions to Congress.

The Obama administration is widely reported to be seriously considering such a transfer. Prasow is cautiously optimistic. “I think the reason the administration is considering that move is because they recognize that the lack of transparency has become a problem. At least I hope that’s why.”

Prasow says if the Pentagon takes over the program it won’t necessarily solve the transparency problem. “We welcome that as an improvement, but only if it actually means increased transparency and not a secretive program just inside the military.”

She warns that the program may be taken over by the Joint Special Operations Command within the military, which is not known for its transparency and is excluded from Congressional oversight.

Andrea Benjamin, an activist who recently published a book about drones, will be protesting and speaking during “April Days of Action.” The anti-drone protests will see participants across the U.S. demonstrate outside of military bases and companies that make drones.

“While it is a positive move to have drones taken out of the hands of the CIA, we do have to demand more accountability from the military,” she says, pointing out that the Pentagon doesn’t disclose the number of deaths from its drone strikes in Afghanistan.

Benjamin is an ardent critic of the use of armed drones. She’s met victims of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and says the strikes are hurting American security more than helping it.

She encountered many people who had no animosity toward America until their loved ones were injured or killed in drone strikes. “We met people who said to us [after losing someone in a strike], ‘If I could kill an American soldier I would do so.’ The anger was palpable, and revenge is part of the culture.”

Benjamin says most of the victims are either local militias or civilians, none of whom threaten Americans in any way. “I would say most of those militants are not after Americans and therefore should not be targeted by Americans.”

She says drones terrorize entire communities, not just victims of the strikes. A recent study by Stanford and New York University found that people in the northern tribal region of Waziristan are suffering severe psychological effects, including suicide and heart attacks, caused by drones constantly flying overhead.

Daniel Byman is Research Director at the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He says drone strikes have multiple benefits for counterterrorism because they disrupt terrorist groups and give them less time to plan attacks. “It forces the terrorist group to play defence.”

He says there is a “moral concern” over civilian casualties, but this isn’t a major factor in causing more terrorism.

Byman says there aren’t any good sources for drone strike casualty data, and wishes the government would release its own. “They need to be much more transparent with the process, and put the data out there.”

He says it’s possible the government doesn’t release their own data because U.S. allies don’t want domestic publicity about letting the CIA conduct strikes within their borders, which would hurt them politically. “This has historically been a very opaque issue. [Governments] want a lot of deniability.”

Yemen has publicly given consent for American strikes within their borders. Pakistan is more complicated because some Pakistani government officials have explicitly stated they haven’t given consent, but Andrea Prasow says “everybody knows that they sort have must have” given consent.

The most widely-cited data about drone strikes is collected by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based in London, England. Its data is collected from publicly available sources such as local news reports, leaked intelligence and academic studies. When members of the Bureau have questions about local news stories, they call up and interview the reporters who originally wrote them. They also occasionally conduct their own investigations on the ground.

According to the Bureau’s data, well over 3,000 people have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan alone, and only two per cent of those have been high profile terrorists.

Chris Woods heads the Bureau’s drone project, and has worked as a journalist in Pakistan on and off since 1999. He says the CIA doesn’t even know the identity of most of the drone strike victims. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal broke a story claiming that the bulk of the targeted killing attacks were “signature strikes,” where a group is targeted based on their “intelligence signature,” a pattern of behaviour collected through intelligence, but their actual identity is unknown.

“If nobody knows exactly who they’re killing, I’m not clear how people can talk about success or failure in Pakistan. We need to understand much more clearly who’s being killed,” Woods says.

He’s skeptical of transferring the targeted killing program to the military. “When either the CIA or the Pentagon kills important bad guys, they are both pretty quick to claim responsibility for those strikes. Unfortunately, when civilians are killed, we see both those organizations behaving pretty appallingly and refusing to take any responsibility for civilian deaths.”

Woods helped to shed light on one of the most controversial parts of the drone program, the so-called “double-tap” strikes. This is when locals trying to help victims of an initial strike are themselves targeted by another strike, or when people attending a funeral of drone strike victims are targeted.

Woods says there were about twenty reports of double tap strikes, and the Bureau was able to confirm beyond a doubt at least a dozen of those, after a three-month investigation involving eyewitnesses in Pakistan. They found that at least 50 civilians had been killed while attempting to help drone strike victims, and over 20 were killed while attending funerals.

“I have absolutely no doubt that the CIA has deliberately targeted first responders and funeral goers in Pakistan,” Woods says. This form of attack is now being investigated by the United Nations as a possible war crime.

Another controversial legal aspect to the targeted killing program is the issue of imminent threat. Under international law, if a state of armed conflict doesn’t exist, a military can only target people to prevent an imminent attack. According to a leaked white paper from the Department of Justice, the Obama administration’s definition of imminence is extremely flexible, not requiring evidence of a planned attack. American citizens can also be targeted, as Anwar al-Awlaki was in September 2011.

“The use of targeted killing in international law is something that is supposed to be used in very narrow circumstances and clearly that is not what is happening here,” says Brett Kaufman, a legal scholar at the American Civil Liberties Union. “The government establishes a very flexible interpretation of imminence which doesn’t match up with what most of us understand to be imminence.”

Andrea Prasow says the U.S. follows its own set of rules that it wouldn’t accept from many other countries. “The U.S. tends to operate under the theory that it can do whatever it wants, but if another country decides to do the same thing, that might be illegal.” She says these rules create a dangerous precedent for other countries that are pursuing their own drone technology.

Medea Benjamin says the damage done by the targeted killing program won’t be easy to fix. “It will take generations to get beyond the hatred that has been built up because of these drones.”

Tina Fedeski believes music can have positive benefits on a child’s confidence, self-discipline and patience.

However, musical programming in schools is less than ideal and private classes can be expensive.

That’s why she started the Leading Note Foundation. The Foundation’s OrKidstra program offers free classes for parents who can’t afford to pay.

Nick Ashdown paid Fedeski and her students a visit.

This piece was done by Nick Ashdown for Midweek on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. It was aired on April 3, 2013.

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/orkidstra-radio-documentary/feed/0nashdownRecipient of experimental Multiple Sclerosis treatment doing remarkably well (radio Q&A)https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/recipient-of-experimental-multiple-sclerosis-treatment-doing-remarkably-well/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/recipient-of-experimental-multiple-sclerosis-treatment-doing-remarkably-well/#respondThu, 04 Apr 2013 17:28:04 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=146Five years ago, medical student Alex Normandin made a decision that could have helped his Multiple Sclerosis, or could have killed him. He decided to let doctors in Ottawa use chemotherapy to destroy his immune system in an effort to reboot it.

His gamble had unexpectedly positive results, and his treatment stopped his condition in its tracks.

Normandin is now a doctor in Montreal. Nick Ashdown reached him in his clinic over the phone.

This piece was done by Nick Ashdown for Midweek on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. It was aired on April 3, 2013.

Correctional Investigator Howard Sapers released a scathing report last Thursday condemning the system for failing Canada’s Indigenous peoples. The Aboriginal inmate population has jumped forty three percent in the last five years.

Carleton law professor Jane Dickson-Gilmore is an expert in Aboriginal justice issues.

Nick Ashdown talked to Dickson-Gilmore about Sapers’ report.

This piece was made by Nick Ashdown for Midweek on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. It was aired on March 13, 2013.

]]>https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/professor-jane-dickson-gilmore-discusses-aboriginals-in-canadas-correctional-system-radio-qa/feed/0nashdownAdvocates criticize Canada’s refugee policies at Refugee Night (radio documentary)https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/advocates-criticize-canadas-refugee-policies-at-refugee-night-radio-documentary/
https://nickashdown.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/advocates-criticize-canadas-refugee-policies-at-refugee-night-radio-documentary/#respondFri, 08 Mar 2013 16:51:55 +0000http://nickashdown.wordpress.com/?p=133Immigration Minister Jason Kenney wasn’t very popular at last Friday’s Refugee Night, held at the University of Ottawa.

Doctors and lawyers told a packed auditorium what they think of Canada’s new refugee laws, and they didn’t mince words. They are concerned about a new measure cutting medical care to refugee claimants.

Nick Ashdown was at the event.

This piece was made by Nick Ashdown for Midweek on CKCU 93.1 FM in Ottawa. It was aired on March 6, 2013.